Japan plans to identity vulnerable internet of things devices the same way hackers do: by trying to log into them. The country wants to gauge its cybersecurity readiness for next year when it hosts the summer Olympics. If vulnerable devices are found, the plan is to notify device owners.

A U.K. court has sentenced Daniel Kaye, 30, after he admitted launching DDoS attacks against Liberia's largest telecommunications company in 2015 and 2016. A rival internet services provider paid Kaye $100,000 to launch the attacks.

A hacktivist who launched distributed denial-of-service attacks on Boston Children's Hospital and another local facility in 2014 has received a lengthy prison sentence and must pay restitution. But will the outcome of the case deter other hackers?

Fifteen of the world's biggest "stresser/booter" services, designed to enable users to launch DDoS attacks against sites on demand, have been shut down, and three men who allegedly ran such services have been charged.

To combat cyberattacks, more nations must not only hold nation-state attackers accountable, but also better cooperate by backing each other's attribution, said Estonian politician Marina Kaljurand, who chairs the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, in her opening keynote speech at Black Hat Europe 2018.

DDoS attacks against healthcare organizations have increased not only in size and scale, but especially in complexity, says Tom Bienkowski of Netscout Arbor. How can enterprises build upon their traditional DDoS defenses?

A new, free decryptor has been released for "aggressive" crypto-locking ransomware called GandCrab. Researchers say GandCrab has come to dominate the ransomware-as-a-service market, earning its development team an estimated $120,000 per month.

HSBC Bank is warning some of its U.S. customers that their personal data was compromised in a breach, although it says it's detected no signs of fraud following the "unauthorized entry." Security experts say the heist has all the hallmarks of a credential-stuffing attack campaign.

Kenneth Schuchman, the alleged author of a supercharged variant of Mirai malware called Satori, has been rearrested for violating his bail conditions. In what may be a coincidence, security researchers say a Satori botnet went dormant following Schuchman's arrest, only to be reawakened later.

One of the co-authors of the devastating Mirai botnet malware has been sentenced to home incarceration and community service, and ordered to pay $8.6 million in restitution, for his role in a series of damaging distributed denial-of-service attacks that disrupted operations at Rutgers University.

Two years after Mirai botnets first appeared, security researchers say telnet-targeting botnets are attempting to compromise internet of things devices by pummeling them with 1,065 different username/password combinations. Some of these attacks are designed to install Linux DDoS malware.

Not only are we now seeing the most powerful DDoS attacks ever recorded, but they also are leveraging the ever-growing army of IoT devices. Gary Sockrider of NETSCOUT Arbor offers advice for detection and defense.

Spain's central bank says its website was intermittently offline as it struggled to repel a distributed denial-of-service attack. The temporary disruption is a reminder "stresser/booter" DDoS-on-demand services remain inexpensive, easy to procure and often effective.